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Want to know what is on our minds? Find blog posts written here, by the City Club staff, members, and partners. Every week you can find a new edition of #FreeSpeech in the News — a collection of related stories, commentary, and opinions on free speech in the 21st century that’s making the news. You’ll also find takes on current events, past forums, and issues surrounding Northeast Ohio. Read on for all things City Club.

The 2016 FilmForum Series in Partnership with the Cleveland International Film Festival, Part 2

As part of our partnership with the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF), the City Club is proud to present 10 FilmForums – a screening followed by a panel discussion – between March 30 to April 10 at #CIFF40. Be sure to use discount code CITYCLUB for $2 the price of admission, our treat. Here is the second group of FilmForums:

“We finna take a Shakespearian play, rewrite it, and make it fit Richmond [California].” With these opening lines, teenager Donté Clark summarizes the plot of Romeo Is Bleeding: a documentary about the life-changing effects of spoken word poetry and its capacity to build a sense of community in a city where Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet bears far too many tragic similarities.

Directors Pablo Iraburu and Migueltxo ignore the functions and politics of walls in this documentary to focus on the human side of the structures. Telling the stories of lives affected by the division on the borders of Spain and Morocco, Mexico and the United States, and South Africa and Zimbabwe, Walls bypasses barriers to get to the heart of the matter: people.

Daddy Don’t Go is an affecting look at the struggles of four disadvantaged fathers trying to raise children on their own in New York City. Attempting to rise above their situations through selfless love, this film exposes the major deficiencies in the legal and administrative systems that serve New York’s poor.

How can planting seeds save a community? Can You Dig This answers that question by telling the incredible story of inner city gardeners in the violent and impoverished food desert of South Los Angeles whose courage and inventiveness give a whole new meaning to growth.

2016 was the year that gun violence became a sadly common occurrence in America. After the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, President Obama urged that legislators feel the “fierce urgency of now” and enact common sense gun reform. The film 91% demonstrates why this has not happened despite the widespread belief among the American people in gun control measures.